Friday, 4 December 2015

What happened to Hilary Benn?

Tomorrow
I’m out all day. This afternoon someone’s coming to see me about their family
funeral. So it’s imperative that I write my sermon for Sunday this morning – because today’s Friday.

But
I can’t settle to it because something is nagging at my mind. Whatever happened
to Hilary Benn?

It’s
not the speech he made that bothers me so much – it’s the apparent U-turn.

On
November 15th, a fortnight before the Syria vote in the House of
Commons, he gave an interview to the Independent newspaper, in which he expressed
his views carefully and in full. You can read what he said here but, to give
you the general idea, one of his remarks about Syria was this: “The most useful contribution we can make is to support as
a nation the peace talks that have started. That is the single most important
thing we can do.”

So
far as we knew, that was his stance, his opinion.

As
the Shadow Foreign Secretary, it cannot be the case that the interview he gave
The Independent caught him on the hop – it is not possible that the opinion he
expressed reflected the un-considered stance of a man who didn’t know much
about the topic. It must have been dominating his thinking in the last few
weeks just as it has been dominated the thinking of all people who care about
national life and international politics.

So
what happened?

On
the night of the Syria debate, 3oth November, Hilary Benn had the job of
summing up for the opposition.

The speech he gave has been hailed with enthusiastic plaudits, though in truth its
merits were almost entirely vested in rhetorical performance rather than in
useful content.

The
sentiments it expressed echoed faithfully the Conservative stance. It was a
surprising summing up for the Opposition.

But
it was a barnstorming speech, full of plenty of the old rabble-rousers, and he
will undoubtedly bear responsibility for having given the United Kingdom a
hefty shove in the direction of the bombing of Syria. And his speech was
modeled upon the one Tony Blair gave, that took us into war with Iraq – see The
Canary’s analysis here.

So
– what happened to Hilary Benn between the fifteenth and the thirtieth of
November?

Do
we simply have a Shadow Foreign Secretary with so loose a grasp of the
international situation that he can think one thing one moment and then two
weeks later think the precise opposite, when nothing has substantially changed?
The tragedy in Paris happened on the seventeenth of November of course – but,
though sickening, that of itself should not be determinant of foreign policy
regarding the best approach to a situation we already knew existed.

What
happened?

It’s
preparing my Sunday sermon that has made me think about it. I’ve been a
preacher for decades, and I know well how long it takes to craft a really good
address. You don’t do it on the spur of the moment. You write it, you re-draft
it, you think hard about it. And, most important of all, from the day you know
you have to do it, you begin the interior work of preparation. In the case of a
sermon, you read the biblical material set for the day, you consider the
context in which that is written and its links with the whole of the Bible and
the Christian tradition, and you think through the connections that has with
present-day faith and believing – both for the congregation who will hear you, and
for wider society. This takes ages. The sermon I will write this morning, I
have been turning over in my mind for two weeks.

It
will be heard only by one congregation of ordinary Methodists in our
unexceptional seaside town here on the south coast of England.

If
I were the Shadow Foreign Secretary tasked with summing up for my party, in a
House of Commons debate that could result in an outcome that took my country
(in austerity measures) to war, caused bombs to be dropped that would certainly
result in civilian deaths, and inevitably incited terrorist reprisal, I would
certainly give such a speech as much consideration as I would give the
preparation of a sermon to a small church’s routine worship on the second
Sunday of Advent.

It was known that Hilary Benn had changed his mind, of course. Before the
debate, he’d made clear he was in favour of air strikes, and would say so from
the back benches if not left free to say so from the front bench.

But
why?

How
could a man so completely reverse his thinking like that?

His
speech was admired. Corbyn had the wise argument, but Benn had the rhetorical style. Clapping and cheering, the pro-war MPs won the day. The
planes with their bombs were ready on the runway.

Today
I read on Facebook words of a volunteer on Lesvos, doing what she can to
help in the camp of refugees from war-torn Syria. She said she kept bursting
into tears, listening at 2am to the bombers flying over.

As
my daughter Grace said on Facebook after the vote – “I’m so sorry, little
Syrian children playing in the rubble.”

What
can Hilary Benn have been thinking of? He was right in mid-November. War is not
the way. Violence begets nothing but violence. As every good parent knows,
hitting children for hitting children is useless. You have to model something
different.

6 comments:

Thankyou Pen for this post...who knows what goes on in the quiet of Westminster rooms...I just keep praying for it all...so many other things arise out of all of this...I listened to Women's Hour today and the young woman in Jordan fighting for the refugee women and sanitary pads for themselves and adult nappies for their disabled children...giving their food money for these items. Hope it goes well on Sunday.

I agree. It is a shadowy world. All I feel I can do now is pray that a miraculous peace come from this. Then politicians will take the credit I suppose but God is much bigger than all that sort of stuff. As you both say - praying and trying to help with the everyday stuff of life as well.

Dear Pen, I am as miserable as you and others who see the determination that aggressive, compassionless people show as they set out to show the world who is "boss". It sickens me.

But here is a bit of balance: I found the Living Lorax and she is alive, living in Canada, and still saving and planting trees. Her name is Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a medical biochemist and poet as you will see when you read her books. I would start with The Sweetness of the Simple Life and then read The Global Forest, 40 Ways Trees Can Save Us. She was born in 1944 in Ireland where her genius was recognized early on. It is the Irish in her that makes her a delightful storyteller and grounded her spirit in the Earth. She is passionate about trees. I think if you read her books, it will make you feel a little better about the shape this world is in and might help you focus on a way to drive up the good. Blessings, Kathryn

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‘Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left. Sell us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass through on foot until we cross the Jordan into the land the Lord our God is giving us.’

(Deuteronomy 2.27-28, 29b NIV UK)

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